Penn men falter in 4x800m

Courtney Jaworski had no doubt that his team belonged in the men's 4x800-meter Championship of America race. But a collision after John Guzman handed the baton to Bryan Scotland for the second leg left the Quakers way behind the pack.

They ended up in 12th place out of the 13, with a final time of seven minutes, 32.61 seconds.

"Mentally it's hard, physically it's hard to do that and then get your body back up afterwards," said Jaworski, who ran the anchor leg. "If that didn't happen, I think we would have been in there, but once that happened it was realy hard to get up to speed mentally."

Oral Roberts won the race in 7:18.74, giving the Golden Eagles their first Championship of America in their first ever trip to the Penn Relays. Villanova finished second in 7:19.06.

The news wasn't all bad for Jaworski, though. As one of the Penn track team's senior captains, he was honored in a ceremony in the infield earlier this afternoon. Getting that kind of recognition in front of today's announced crowd of 49,771 -- the second largest Saturday crowd ever, and there were plenty of empty seats in the upper deck -- is a nice treat.

So too is the weather, which has been spectacularly rain-free for all three days of the relays. Jaworski picked a good year to be a senior.